"Hysterical" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... home she was pale and hysterical, and would say nothing in answer to all their questions but her favourite word, "We ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... the natural susceptibility of man in these directions is increased and intensified, and exercised upon a superior plane, when it is utilized by intelligent spirit operators. It is not true that sensitiveness is confined to those who are diseased, weak of will, neurotic, or hysterical. Those who are susceptible to psychic influence may be impulsive, warm-hearted, spontaneous, sociable, and not by any means, or of necessity, weak-minded or vicious." Dr. Dean Clake says: "The word mediumship, as understood and used by spiritualists, technically ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... agitated, remorseful countenance, others seen in profile only, while many are whisperings at dusk. Most of them are called feminine, a term psychologically false. The poetic side of men of genius is feminine, and in Chopin the feminine note was over emphasized—at times it was almost hysterical—particularly ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... lying. Family history negative. The third, 13 years old, told of an imaginary uncle who was going to collect funds for needy children; she kept up the deceit for two months. She was an anemic, nervous, hysterical child with a nervous mother. Meunier calls these cases of systematized deliriums. The development of such delirium annihilates, so to speak, the entire personality of the subject, and his entire mental life is ...
— Pathology of Lying, Etc. • William and Mary Healy
... us into the nearest ward until he could fetch a light—locking the door behind us lest any of the lunatics should escape. The noise had awakened one of the unfortunate inmates of the ward, and her hysterical scream had terrified ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... may remember, was a student of human nature, believed that Miss Whyte lived on her nerves, and he had therefore planned to leave her alone for a few moments to allow any hysterical tendency to exhaust itself. When he returned, he found her looking straight before her with ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... A hysterical catch of breath from Miss Vera de Long broke the ear-splitting silence. She reached out, the three plumes dipping down the bare V of her back, for the limp ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... stage, at back, excitedly.] Jordan! [She enters, excited, half hysterical.] Jordan! Where is Jordan? It was a lie! What did he mean? Richard is sleeping sweetly. The maid knows nothing of being alarmed! ...
— The Climbers - A Play in Four Acts • Clyde Fitch
... hesitating to insult or annoy them in the most shameless way. I once forced a little maid of mine to wear the regular maid's dress of black, with muslin cap and apron, and she was certainly a joy to the eye; but one day I sent her out on an errand, and she came back almost hysterical under the torrent of ribald admiration which my thoughtlessness had brought upon her. A seamstress will not remain alone in your house while you run into a neighbor's on an errand without bolting herself in the room; and, if you are ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... stooping to kiss me. I cannot account for my action or condemn it sufficiently. It was hysterical—the outcome of an overstrung, highly excitable, and nervous temperament. Perhaps my vanity was wounded, and my tendency to strike when touched was up in arms. The calm air of ownership with which Harold drew near ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... prompt and complete. Jane did not rage or become hysterical, she did not even weep in his presence. But, quietly, with a set of her square little chin, she informed Captain Zelotes that she loved Speranza, that she meant to marry him and that she should marry him, some day or other. The captain raged, commanded, ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... as the feeling of acute hunger, which make my finest thoughts get mixed up with thoughts of porridge, cutlets, and fried fish. When I stand alone in the fields and look up at the larks hanging marvellously in the air, and bursting with hysterical song, I think: "It would be nice to have some bread and butter." Or when I sit in the road and shut my eyes and listen to the wonderful sounds of a May-day, I remember how good hot potatoes smell. Being big and of a strong constitution I never have quite enough ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... said she, and she turned to go away; but her wrath bust the flood-gates, and swept away discretion and forethought. She moved and stood in the gateway. Her lips parted, but no sound came; with an hysterical motion she threw her arms suddenly up to heaven, as if bringing down lightning toward the gray old house to which she pointed as they fell, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... down in the Argentine five days ago—that's another item kept from an hysterical public. They slaughtered some thousands of cattle; there were scores of them found where the devils—I'll borrow Riley's word—where the devils had fed. Nothing left but hide ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... broken into a kind of sob, the sound that tells of strain and hysteria, but what was there in Mangadone to make a respectable parson strained and hysterical? ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... answered Keyork with considerable scorn. "I do not know what she is, or what to call her—a sensitive, an hysterical subject, a medium, a witch—a fool, if you like, or a charlatan if you prefer the term. Beautiful she is, at least, whatever ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... weak, hysterical laugh, "and I took that for a spirit," he exclaimed. "Well, our mystery ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... into hysterical tears, and he soon found himself involved in all the remorseful, inconsequent speeches to which a man in such a plight feels himself driven. She allowed herself to be calmed, and they had a dreary making-up. When it was over, however, George was left with the ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of the physician who deals with this class of ailments, with the nervous and feeble, the painworn, the hysterical, is one of the utmost gravity. It demands the kindliest charity. It exacts the most temperate judgments. It requires active, good temper. Patience, firmness, and discretion are among its necessities. Above all, the man who is to deal with such cases must carry with him that earnestness ...
— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell
... quickly. In his frenzy of terror he managed to roll off the bed. The pain and shock of the fall jolted him back to something like sane consideration of his plight. Where before he had been unable to think intelligently because of the hysterical fear that had claimed him he now lay quietly searching for some means of escape from his dilemma. It finally occurred to him that the room in which Lord and Lady Greystoke had been sitting when he left them was directly beneath that in ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... His conscience was wholly clear except about his native planet. This was insanity! He went curiously into the building and into the hearing room. His guards, there, surrendered him to courtroom guards and went away with almost hysterical haste. Nobody wanted to be ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... with a lift of his eyebrows at the sight of the rag doll in Hester's hand. She, on her part, felt a sudden hysterical desire to ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... among the fair sex, cannot be denied; indeed, a conversation seldom passes among them, but some inconsistent dream or other, form a leading feature of their gossip; and doubtless is with them an hysterical symptom. ...
— Thaumaturgia • An Oxonian
... conventional acceptance of the Christian miracles. If we would realise this we must look to modern alleged miracles—to the enthusiasm of the Irish and American revivals, when mind inflames mind till strong men burst into hysterical tears like children; we must look for it in the effect produced by the supposed Irvingite miracles on those who believed in them, or in the miracles that followed the Port Royal miracle of the holy thorn. There never was a miracle solitary yet: ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... tilt at us along the ditch, and we both fired together. The hare shrieked, and turned a big somersault and fell on its back and kicked convulsively—its legs still galloping—and its face and neck were covered with blood; and, to my astonishment, Barty became quite hysterical with grief at what we had done. It's the only time ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... live for. Those hallucinations and dreams are not as uncommon as you think. I could give you cases of shell shock patients who have suffered in this way and come back to normal health. You have been through enough, my young friend, to bring about a somewhat hysterical condition that is susceptible of cure, if you will put yourself in favorable conditions. Do you mind if I ask you straight out whether you have any objections ...
— Possessed • Cleveland Moffett
... trial on the 8th of June. It is a sad fact to record, even at this distance, that these poor blacks, without counsel, friends, or money, were tried and convicted upon the evidence of a poor ignorant, hysterical girl, and the "dying confession" of Quack and Cuffee, who "confessed" with the understanding that they should be free! Tried and found guilty on the 8th, without clergy or time to pray, they were burned at the stake the next day! Only Jack found favor with the court, and that favor was purchased ...
— History of the Negro Race in America From 1619 to 1880. Vol 1 - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George W. Williams
... I was a silly, hysterical idiot," she murmured. "Why, I couldn't even tell them what I was afraid of. I wonder if it can possibly be just nerves? It doesn't seem ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... torment was the constant vision of that face in the curtains at the Northern. It was her brother, yet what mystery shrouded this affair, also? What kept him from her? What caused him to slink away like a thief discovered? She grew dizzy and hysterical. ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... he cried excitedly, and with a hysterical laugh. "The words I use to myself when I think of the mystery which they strove so carefully to conceal from me, but which for all their cunning I have discovered. When first I came here, I saw, either in hell or in heaven, the faces of most of the dead whom ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... when a hysterical laugh startled the man, who leaned back on the front seat, with his arms crossed tightly over a heart ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... which Dan Cupid, Unlimited, does business, none is more nefarious than his course by correspondence. Once he has induced two guileless clients to plunge into the traffic of love letters, the rest is easy. Wild speculation in love stock, false valuations, hysterical desire to buy in the cheapest and sell in the dearest market, invariably follow. Before the end of the month Harold Phipps and Eleanor Bartlett were gambling in the love market with a recklessness that would have staggered the most hardened ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... laughing; and then she was vexed at herself that the laugh changed to a sob and the tears came. Was she hysterical? It was very unlike her, but this seemed something like it. Neither could she immediately conquer the strangling sensation, between laughter and crying, ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume II • Susan Warner
... the way of Providence; the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor the prophecy to the wise. The Spirit bloweth where He listeth, and sends on his errands—those who deny Him, rebel against Him—profligates, madmen, and hysterical Rousseaus, hysterical Shelleys, uttering words like the east wind. He uses strange tools in His cosmogony: but He does not use them in vain. By bad men if not by good, by fools if not by wise, God's work is done, and done ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... aside and threw herself upon the sofa. Her first feeling was a horrible joy at not hearing the name of Octave; but she tried to smother her hysterical utterances by pressing her mouth against the cushion upon ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... costumes of the masked revelers on the dance floor and at the tables, unearthly in themselves, were made even more so by the altering light. Music flooded the room from unseen sources. Laughter—hysterical, drunken, filled with utter abandonment—came from the dance floor, the tables, and the private booths and rooms hidden ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... from me, still expanded in mirth. There was but one revolution made, when the wright succeeded in stopping the works. This brought the great wheel back nearly to its original position, and I fairly shouted with hysterical delight when I saw my father standing in his tracks, as it might be, seemingly unhurt. Unhurt he would have been, though he must have passed a fearful keel-hauling, but for one circumstance. He had held on to the wheel with the tenacity of a seaman, since letting ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... you fool! I'm not a ghost!" shouted Gay, but the only response came in an hysterical babble of moans from the negro quarters somewhere in the rear and in the soft whir in his face of a leatherwing bat as it wheeled low in the twilight. There was no smoke in the chimneys, and the square old house, with its hooded roof and its vacant windows, assumed a ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... for this hint, Anna burst into a flood of tears. I was frightened, for her sobs became hysterical and convulsed. Those precious sentiments which had been so long imprisoned in her gentle bosom, obtained the mastery, and I was well paid for my selfishness, by experiencing an alarm little less violent than ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... is the vigorous creation of a craftsman who builded his art with noble restraint on the great achievements of the past, and who respected himself and the material he worked in; the other is the disturbing cry of one who is intellectually an hysterical parvenu. ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... don't believe in it. My dear, your strong mind is all humbug, or you would not look so frightened," and again she was on the verge of hysterical laughing; "it is only that I can't stand a chorus of old ladies in commotion. How happy Alick must be to have his prediction verified by some one tumbling over a hoop!" Just then, however, seeing ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and making for her, made Popocatepetl quite hysterical. She arched her back, spit angrily, and then dove from the table. In her flight she overturned the china cup of molasses which fell to the floor and broke. The sticky liquid was ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... down, he cannot keep awake when he stands up. He cannot concentrate, but still he is pitifully worried about his life. The slightest irritant causes him to go off the handle. As he works himself up into his hysterical state as a reaction to a disagreeable person or problem, irregular blotches may appear on his face and neck. Generally, his hands and feet are clammy and perspiring, his face is abnormally flushed or pallid, the eyes are worried or starey, unwonted wandering ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... hysterical shriek, and shook herself free, but ere she could realise what had actually happened, the two men, without further word, had left the room, her husband slamming the door after ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... affected. A physician writes: One of the saddest chapters in the history of human deception, that of the Salem witches, might be headed, "Hysteria in Children," since the tragedy resulted directly from the hysterical pranks of girls under twelve years of age. During late years it has been quite frequent among men and boys. It seems to occur oftener in the warm and mild climates than in the cold. There are two predisposing causes that are very ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... them truths without accommodation. "You 're farther off from God than any woman I ever heard of." "Nay, if you believe in a protective tariff, you 're in hell already, though you may not know it." "You had a fine hysterical time last night, didn't you, when Miss B was brought up from the ravine with her dislocated shoulder." To Miss B he said: "I don't pity you. It served you right for being so ignorant as to go there at that hour." Seldom, strange to say, did the recipients of these ...
— Memories and Studies • William James
... abstinence as safer for his ward, but he thought that the time had come for training, in seeing without partaking. Wilmet agreed, and said she had tried to persuade her sister; but she had only caused an hysterical agitation, so that weakness as usual gained the victory, and she had all but promised to bring the boy home again unless she ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... muffled voice of hysterical self-accusation, pushing his head away). No, no, you mustn't! I was wrong. The doctor told you not to, didn't he? Please don't, Fred! It would be awful if anything happened to you—through me. (Nicholls gives ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... audience. They all knew I was Welsh and saw the joke. The horror and suspense had been so great that when it broke with comic relief the house was really hysterical. ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... free, massa? Am de chile FREE? she exclaimed, taking him in her arms, and bursting into a hysterical fit of weeping. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... who look beneath unusual human phenomena for signs of the pathologic finds Michelangelo "affected by a degree of neuropathy bordering closely upon hysterical disease." What a pity that more of us do not suffer from such degrees of neuropathy—and how much better for most of us if we had such enthusiasm for perfection, and such mania for work, at least of that health-bringing sort in which there is absorbing ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... an excellent opportunity for a woman to have forced sentiment into the position, and dragged it on from there to intimacy, to have put out her hand to touch him, seemingly for comfort, but in reality with an hysterical desire for some demonstration of affection. Sally had done none of these things. With a giant effort she had struggled against her inertia. There she was before him, walking up and down the room, talking anything that came into her head with forced courage, feigning ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... colonel gently, for she was getting hysterical. He held out his arms to her, and with another burst of weeping ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... Hysterical tears poured forth as I joyfully stroked and pinched my regained possession-a body free from any bullet hole in the breast. I rocked to and fro, inhaling and exhaling to assure myself that I was alive. Amidst these self-congratulations, again ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... hurt if I am very happy, or very excited, or any thing, but it's never been quite so bad as this before." And then, catching the distress upon my face, she added, "I daresay this is nothing. It will go off. I think it is only hysterical. Don't look so unhappy!" And a faint smile ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... from my bed and went to her precipitately. I found her indulging in a passionate burst of grief, almost choking with sobs of hysterical indignation. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Pull yourself together. You're getting hysterical," urged Hardwick kindly. Then he turned to MacPherson. As the two men went companionably down the walk and out into the street, ...
— The Power and the Glory • Grace MacGowan Cooke
... Ages religious beliefs filled the minds of all and colored the criminal or insane excesses of many of the unbalanced. A similar insanity was the efficient cause of the more or less hysterical "sanctity" of some of the saints. At the close of our century it is the politico-social questions which absorb (and with what overwhelming interest!) the universal consciousness—which is stimulated by that universal contagion created by journalism with its great ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri
... little shaken," answered Winnie, with a little laugh that was half hysterical. "I am strong ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... with amazing fluency in French and Arabic, while his orderly fell into half-hysterical prayer. Bristol—stolid Englishman though he was—had to make a strong effort to keep his teeth from chattering. The two Italians, one with an ugly wound on the jaw, burst out laughing, waving their arms extravagantly. Simonds shouted jubilation ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... and being a little hysterical with the sudden alarm, Christie broke into a peal of ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... two of the women in the passage became hysterical. The young men looked on awkwardly, with grave faces, not knowing what to do. There was something very English in their shy aloofness; in their dislike of intruding ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... speak of my own, too much to allow him to know anything. This is what troubles me so much. If he is re-elected, I can keep him in ignorance of my affairs; but if he is defeated, then the bills will be sent in, and he will know all;" and something like a hysterical sob escaped her. ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... that, for Si Snubbins was funny, whether intentionally so or not. Nan continued to try to soothe the almost hysterical ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... do not know how good he is, nor how he raises me! I never knew the sort of creature I was until he told me. He said once, when we quarrelled, that I was fanciful, sentimental, lackadaisical, hysterical, and in an unhealthy state ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... be made to swallow a little port wine it might make her sleepy. The sun was paying its brief morning visit to the kitchen and pantry when she reached there, but a few cockroaches scuttled away before her and made her utter a hysterical little scream. But there WAS some condensed milk and there was a little warm water in a kettle became the fire was not quite out. She imperfectly mixed a decoction and filled a bottle which ought not to have been downstairs but had ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... But that would be a dear-bought victory. Let her keep what faith in him she can. No; in families, the ones who can control themselves have to give in—to those who can't. If you argue with Christine she simply gives way, and then she gets hysterical, and then she is ill. It's a disease. Mothers know how their children—Christine was marked—marked with trouble! I am thankful she has any mind at all. She needs me more than Paul does. I cannot be parted from my power to help ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... brute! I'll kill the hateful cat! I don't care whose it is!—my poor dear, dear, dear bird!" The voice was Margaret's. At first, its tones were tones of fury; they were afterwards broken by hysterical sobs. ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... Your objection is answered by the theory that individual sacrifice is unavailing: indeed, it is as useless as giving charity, quite. A case of intense suffering is brought under the notice of a bourgeois; it awakens in him a certain hysterical pity, or, I should say, remorse, for he feels that a system that permits such things to be cannot be wholly right. He relieves this suffering, and then he thinks he is a virtuous man; he thinks he has done a good action; but a moment's reflection shows us that this good action is only selfishness ...
— Celibates • George Moore
... into the hall. "Great work, boy, and take it from me, you'll go over. Say, honest now, I'm glad clear down into my boots." She had both his hands again, and he could see that her eyes were moist. She seemed to be an impressionable little thing, hysterical one minute while looking at a bunch of good stills, and sort of weepy the next. But he was beginning to like her, in spite of her ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... mother from falling, and she was helped into a chair, clinging to my hand, though, all the time, as she burst into a hysterical fit of sobbing. But she calmed down after a few minutes, and the gentlemen, who had been talking in a low voice earnestly together, now resumed their places, the Doctor ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... would not nowadays bear recital; at log-rollings, where the neighbors gathered to collect the logs of a newly cleared lot for burning; and at house-raisings, where they kindly aided to set up the frame of a cabin for a new-comer; at camp-meetings, where the hysterical excitement of a community whose religion was more than half superstition found clamorous and painful vent;[30] or perchance at a hanging, which, if it met public approbation, would be sanctioned by the gathering of ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... making at a raft, With little hope in such a rolling sea, A sort of thing at which one would have laugh'd, If any laughter at such times could be, Unless with people who too much have quaff'd, And have a kind of wild and horrid glee, Half epileptical and half hysterical:— Their preservation would ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... a fit of hysterical weeping the woman drew back, endeavoring to close the cabin door. But Darrin's foot across the ...
— Dave Darrin After The Mine Layers • H. Irving Hancock
... mercantile community gave him no warnings, that the 'masterly inactive' part, so greatly esteemed by him for the conduct of public affairs, might be perilous in dealings with a vivid girl: nor a hint, that when facts continue undigested, it is because the sensations are as violent as hysterical females to block them from the understanding. His Robin Goodfellow instinct tried to be serviceable at a crux of his meditations, where Edith Averst's consumptive brothers waved faded hands at her chances of inheriting largely. Superb for the chances: but what of her offspring? And the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Dirty Genitals IBM 360 > IBM Three-Sickly Government Property —- Do Not Duplicate (on keys) > Government Duplicity —- Do Not Propagate for historical reasons > for hysterical raisins Margaret Jacks Hall (the CS building at Stanford) ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10
... which is it?... My dear man, the girl Micky went to Paris with was Esther! my Esther Shepstone! and here you are trying to tell me that she and Micky are married!" She burst into hysterical laughter. ...
— The Phantom Lover • Ruby M. Ayres
... was sold to Spain, the Reformed religion was to be trampled out in the Provinces, and the Papacy and Holy Inquisition established on its ruins. Nothing could be more diametrically the reverse of the fact than such hysterical suspicions as to the instructions of the ambassador extraordinary from France, and this has already appeared. The Vorstian affair too was still in the same phase, the Advocate professing a willingness that justice should be done in the matter, ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to export, in order to help our own population. We could and would hold out without this assistance. But I know my duty, and my duty bids me do all that can be done to lighten the burden of our suffering people, and I will not, therefore, from any hysterical nervousness about getting to final peace a few days or a few weeks earlier, throw away this possible advantage to our people. Such a peace takes time and cannot be concluded in a day. For such a peace must definitely state whether, what and how the Russian party will deliver to us, for the ...
— In the World War • Count Ottokar Czernin
... of people looked up breathless at the towering figure, and a wave of fear passed over them and several hysterical shrieks rose up as, very slowly, the huge head shook from side to side. But the smile on its lips became stronger, and kinder, and the bitterness seemed ...
— A Scientist Rises • Desmond Winter Hall
... to aggravate, and even invent, conditions likely to cause mutual irritation, distrust, and dislike, much good would accrue. Nations depend largely for their prosperity upon their trade with other nations, and peace is the greatest interest to all; yet the actions of some noisy and hysterical sections amongst them are a constant source of danger, and are calculated to bring about wars which must inevitably prove most disastrous ...
— To Mars via The Moon - An Astronomical Story • Mark Wicks
... of the former theory and the most successful application of it are found in Christian Science. Perhaps it is not so difficult to understand the frame of mind which brought about this theory on the part of Mrs. Eddy. Here was an hysterical, neurotic woman who knew nothing all her life but illness and misfortune. She had suffered much from many physicians and was none the better but rather worse. One physician had called her disease one ...
— Three Thousand Years of Mental Healing • George Barton Cutten
... emotion which even the presence of his Reverence could not quell, let what the neighbours described afterwards as a 'screech out of her fit to wake the dead,' and fled into her house, where on her bed she had an attack which came as near being hysterical as the strong-minded woman could compass. She only recovered when Mrs. Devine and Mrs. Cahill and the widow Mulvany, running in, proposed to drench her with cold water, when her heels suddenly left off drumming and she stood up, very determinedly, and bade them be off ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... she would invariably insist upon doing something or other which I was obliged to prohibit or prevent; and the slightest opposition to her will would instantly produce such fits of passion, and of crying, that my aunt at her return found her frequently in such a state of hysterical nervousness, or else so pale and exhausted by her own violence, that it was some time before she could be restored to anything like calmness or good-humour. I can truly say that I made every possible effort to gain the affection of my little ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... seemed to go through Rudolph's heart like a death-knell. His love for her was a jealous, fantastic, weird, hysterical love. Scores of times they were on the point ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... to feel a glow of satisfaction at having achieved so much reputation. A large part of it, he felt, was undeserved and rather hysterical, but that he had been able to do a big thing made him surer of his ground in his new field of endeavor. He believed, too, that it would aid him largely in obtaining the confidence of those with whom he expected to work and of those he ...
— Philip Dru: Administrator • Edward Mandell House
... there was trouble. It began with Marion's behaviour at breakfast. As a rule she is a young woman of placid and equable temper, one who is likely in the future to have a soothing effect on her husband. That morning she was very nearly hysterical. When we went into my study after breakfast she was quite incapable of work, and could not lay her hands on any of the papers which I particularly wanted. I was irritated at the moment, but I recognized afterwards that she had some excuse, and in any case my ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... laughing. Nothing Danbury could have said would so prove the inconsequence of his injuries. It relieved his strained nerves until, in reaction, he became almost hysterical. ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... can't—" He was about to explain everything when the memory of Willie's words smote him like a blow. That fiend had threatened to kill him, Lawrence Glass, without preliminary if it became evident that a fraud had been practiced. Manifestly this was no place for hysterical confidences. Larry's mouth closed like a trap, while the Californian watched him intently. At length he did speak, but in a strangely softened tone, and at utter variance ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... backward on her sexual irritation, which soon overaccentuates everything which stands in relation to sex. Soon she lives in an atmosphere of high sexual tension in which the sound and healthy interests of a young life have to suffer by the hysterical emphasis on sexuality. The Freudian psychoanalysis, which threatens to become the fad of the American neurologists, probably goes too far when it seeks the cause for all neurasthenic and hysteric disturbances in repressed sexual ideas of youth. But no psychotherapist can doubt that the havoc ...
— Psychology and Social Sanity • Hugo Muensterberg
... that. Throughout the chaotic day I recall so many wild things I had heard others say, and had myself thought. The dead come to life as living wraiths? A ghost could not materialize and kidnap a girl of flesh and blood. Or could it? Hysterical speculation! Or were these ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... a man in great pain checked her hysterical sobs. Dazed, she passed her hand over her face as if to clear away the dark shades that were obstructing her vision. Another groan—and like a flash she was down on her knees lavishing endearments upon the ...
— The Girl of the Golden West • David Belasco
... a fancy draper's, I acted with cunning. In the centre of the window, on a raised background of silver paper, was displayed a wreath of orange-blossom veiled with tulle. I bought it. The young ladies were hysterical. "May I ask permission to put this little handbill in its place?" I said. They appealed to the shopwalker. "In the absence of the head of the firm I cannot see my way to accede to your request," he said. "At present he is on the Rhine. On his demobilisation I will place ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 5, 1919 • Various
... brought forward. His weapons were restored to him. With the long strain of fear lifted at last from his mind, it was hard for him to keep down a touch of hysterical joy. But he managed to return Jack's casual greeting with one ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... to call it his love of being in the centre of the picture. It is his constant desire to make his environment revolve around him and to attract all attention to himself. Somewhat later in life this desire to attract attention, at all costs, is well seen in the type of girl popularly regarded as hysterical. The impulse is then a morbid and debased impulse; in the child it is natural and, within limits, praiseworthy. A girl of this sort, who feels that she is not likely to attract attention because of any special gifts ...
— The Nervous Child • Hector Charles Cameron
... comparisons with the Pullman that had carried us so smoothly from Boston to Buffalo. It is well to be honest, even to our own adulation, and one must confess that the sleeping-car of the European continent is but the nervous and hysterical daughter of the American mother of sleeping-cars. Many express trains are run without any sleeper, and the charges for berths are ludicrously extravagant—five dollars apiece for a single night. It is not ...
— A Little Swiss Sojourn • W. D. Howells
... altar. The Rajah was knocked down and nearly trampled on by the maddened, hysterical crowd. Dewan, Ministers, officials, guards were hustled and swept aside. The cavalry commander saw his ruler's danger and collecting a dozen of his sowars charged the religious-mad mob and rescued the Rajah from his dangerous ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... at the string and paper. And then an ecstatic scream of joy; and then, alas! a quick feminine change to hysterical tears and wails, necessitating the immediate employment of all the comforting powers of ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... usual proportion of hysterical nonsense from the De Wet expert and various intelligence and departmental centres; also a direct order from the general at De Aar to proceed without delay to Orange River Station and there entrain for Jagersfontein Road in the Orange River ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... boy. He remembered now that Elspeth, for whom he had filled his pockets, was praying for him; he could see her on her knees, saying, "Oh, God, I'se praying for Tommy," and remorse took hold of him and shook him on his seat. He broke into one hysterical laugh and then immediately began to sob. This was the moment when Shovel should have got him ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... sobbing, but not without that almost hysterical emotion which indicates that tears are ...
— Miss Mackenzie • Anthony Trollope
... nowhere great, was widely diffused. The petty masters, however, maintained so little system in the management of their slaves that the public problem of social control was relatively intense. It was a state of affairs conducing to severe legislation, and to hysterical action ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... fair liar he had become. Not that the lad was a bad fellow at heart; but he had been chosen by the harpies at home, on account of his "peculiar vocation;" in plain English, because the wily priests had seen in him certain capacities of vague hysterical fear of the unseen (the religious sentiment, we call it now-a-days), and with them that tendency to be a rogue, which superstitious men always have. He was now a tall, handsome, light-complexioned man, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... reeds before the wind. The women gathered round the windows, fascinated to look on the scene which terrified them. Mrs. Thornton, the women-servants, Margaret,—all were there. Fanny had returned, screaming up-stairs as if pursued at every step, and had thrown herself in hysterical sobbing on the sofa. Mrs. Thornton watched for her son, who was still in the mill. He came out, looked up at them—the pale cluster of faces—and smiled good courage to them, before he locked the factory-door. Then he called to one of the women ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the last," returned Joan, with what was nearly an hysterical laugh, trying to shake off the fear that grew upon her; "the last thing is to stand up and call the king ...
— Warlock o' Glenwarlock • George MacDonald
... argument for law, that the whole community is sinfully unfit for liberty; and Mr. Fortescue falls into the usual maze of self-contradiction and obscurity when he tries to give an intelligible account of a war which lasted seven long and weary years, and yet was "factitious," initiated by an hysterical rabble, stimulated and sustained by the basest and pettiest motives, and which, he contends, was "the work of a small but energetic and well-organized minority towards which the mass of the people, when not directly hostile, was mainly indifferent." Happily, Mr. Fortescue's ...
— The Framework of Home Rule • Erskine Childers
... Protestant women nurses arrived at Alexandria, where they were made unwelcome. Medical directors, surgeons, ward masters objected, bluntly declaring that they wouldn't endure a lot of women interfering and fussing and writing hysterical nonsense to the ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... time they reached the summit, Bet and Kit were almost hysterical from laughing. Bet put the gun down gingerly. "I wonder what I would have done, if they had called my bluff!" ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... the past year," that the financier runs the slightest risk. It may be that a purchaser would find it so difficult to prove the falsity of any of the statements upon which he had relied in purchasing the stock that the vendor would practically be immune, but in these days of muck- raking and of an hysterical public conscience prosecutors sometimes go to the most absurd lengths and spend ridiculous sums of money out of the county treasuries to send promoters ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... 376. Epileptic and Hysterical Fits, Convulsions of Children. Sufferers from "fits" are more or less common. In epilepsy, the sufferer falls with a peculiar cry; a loss of consciousness, a moment of rigidity, and violent convulsions follow. There is foaming ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... the history of the church in all ages, and especially in times of deep and earnest spiritual feeling. But in the case of the Quaker revival it was attended most conspicuously by its evil consequences. Half-crazy or more than half-crazy adventurers and hysterical women, taking up fantastical missions in the name of the Lord, and never so happy as when they felt called of God to some peculiarly outrageous course of behavior, associated themselves with sincere and conscientious reformers, ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon
... terrifying in its fierceness, and then the very badness of it gave the effect of a caricature. His eyebrows were too black, his lips too grim, his jaw too firmly set; and his haggard eyes looked like those of a woman who is about to burst into hysterical tears. It was Pisen-face Lynch, and as Wunpost caught his eye he gave way ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... Vaccaro, should all this time have been busily engaged in painting so characteristic and highly picturesque a scene. Within the churches, and particularly in St Januarius' own cathedral, enormous crowds of hysterical men and women had collected, loudly bewailing their past sins and imploring the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... looms were at their noisy spider work; reels of gold thread were ordered in twenties; the bobbins began to dance around the maypole, sewing-machines sang lustily; the telephone only ceased ringing to deliver messages. Miss Rabbit became hysterical, vehement, cross; Gertie's intervention became necessary to prevent a strike amongst the pinafored ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge
... I've talked it. But your telling me that you threw it all over—that little home out there, and a man that was driving down deeply the stakes of his home—threw it over because the black spot from his collar button made you feel hysterical—Oh, I tell you there is a grin through the scheme of things. A laugh. What old man Metz used to call ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... or fractionation of the consciousness and personality have often been described in the case of hysterical subjects. They sometimes occur quite spontaneously, but mostly they require a little suggestion and cultivation. In any case, that they are produced in one way or other proves that they are possible, and, for the theory, this ...
— The Mind and the Brain - Being the Authorised Translation of L'me et le Corps • Alfred Binet
... her arms. I could not believe at first that she was crying. The policeman had wandered across to the other rail, and stood looking out at the city lights, his back to us. I put my hand out to touch her soft hair, then drew it back. I could not take advantage of her sympathy, of the hysterical excitement of that last night on the Ella. I put my hands in my pockets, and held them there, clenched, lest, in spite of my will, I reach out to ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and he was unannounced. My sister colored to the very temples on seeing the young pastor, and her hands trembled in the vain endeavor to fold Lord Treherne's letter, which at length she impatiently crushed together. I heard a half-smothered hysterical sob, as, with a faltering voice, she bade our guest "Good-evening." Ah! when the heart is aching and throbbing with agony, concealed and suppressed, it requires heroic self-command to descend to the commonplaces of this workaday world; but women early learn to conceal ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... while a sob mounted in her throat. She was still in the grip of that violent half-hysterical impulse which had possessed her since the evening of Bella Morrison's visit. Nights almost sleepless, arrangements made and carried out in a tumult of excitement, a sense of impending tragedy, accepted, ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... remembered that he had never confided but he had been betrayed; he had never forgiven but to sharpen enmity. He was amidst a ferocious people, uncertain friends, wily enemies; and misplaced mercy would be but a premium to conspiracy. Yet the struggle he underwent was visible in the hysterical emotions he betrayed. He now wept bitterly, now laughed wildly. "Can I never again have the luxury to forgive?" said he. The coarse spectators of that passion deemed it,—some imbecility, some hypocrisy. ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... that to which I could easiest find access without exciting notice. I made my way to it unobserved, rapped, and to my great relief the door was opened by the man himself. He did not recognise me for some time, but as soon as he did, he fell into a paroxysm half hysterical, half frantic. I had completed his ruin, he exclaimed, and his unhappy family would have to curse me as the cause of his destruction. He was ready to sink on the floor in sheer terror, and with difficulty ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... orders, and everyone understood. Some husbands were permitted to go with their hysterical wives. Presently, "That will do," ordered the captain. "There are plenty of boats, and there need be ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... gave a low, hysterical laugh. "You think you hide the real thing from me. I know I'm ignorant and selfish and feeble-minded, but I can see farther than you think. You want to tell the truth about—about it, because you are ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... calmer I took her hands in mine and, looking her full in the face in the manner which I had sometimes used to quiet an hysterical ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... full minute Elta stood in the doorway gazing wonderingly at this strange scene. Then her mother caught sight of the girl's wide-eyed bewilderment, and burst into a fit of laughter that was almost hysterical. ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... words hurriedly, and only the restraint that comes with a seat in a hansom cab within full view of the populace of Camden Town prevented her bursting into hysterical tears. ...
— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall
... told Riel that Sir Garnet Wolseley, at the head of a large force, was marching against him, he refused to believe it. It was not till he actually with his own eyes, saw the troops that he was convinced. Then with hysterical precipitation the greasy murderer scurried out of the Fort, mounted a horse, and rode away in mortal terror. Later, he was reduced to the necessity of walking, and when his boots were worn off his feet, ...
— The Story of Louis Riel: The Rebel Chief • Joseph Edmund Collins
... "I took you all this time for a crazy Roundhead preacher." He laughs, and she, and then I—all three together in the rain are overtook by an unreasonable gust or clap of laughter, which none the less eased us. We call it in medicine the Hysterical Passion. So I ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... for when she went to Boston. It cost very little to keep her for a few months in her small room. The people of the house promised to be decently kind to her. Margery had only been away from home two weeks when the child was born. The hysterical paroxysms and violent outbreaks of grief its mother had passed through, her convulsive writhings and clutchings and beating of her head against the walls had distorted and exhausted the little creature. The women who were with her said its body ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... and tried to tell her how distressed and helpless she was. And the result was that Mrs. Robbie flew into a passion and railed at her, declaring in the presence of several people that she had sponged upon her and abused her hospitality! And so poor Alice came home, weeping and half hysterical. ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... said a hoarse trembling voice which it was difficult to recognise as Bainton's; "For the Lord's sake, don't make that noise, gel! Think o' Passon!—do'ee think o' Passon! We must break it to 'im gently like—-" But the hysterical sobbing broke out again and ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... turn now to laugh. The very thought of it was farcical in its very odiousness. Merri, who had embarked on his proposal with grandiloquent phraseology, suddenly paused, almost awed by that strange, hysterical laughter. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... telling you, colonel, that you're no beauty," said Dick, who felt a sort of hysterical wish to laugh. "You look as if the whole Southern army had tried to shoot you up, but had merely clipped you all around ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and blowing at Eldridge's Crossing. From the stately pine-trees on the hill-tops, which were dignifiedly protesting through their rigid spines upward, to the hysterical willows in the hollow, that had whipped themselves into a maudlin fury, there was a general tumult. When the wind lulled, the rain kept up the distraction, firing long volleys across the road, letting loose miniature cataracts from the ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... distracted. I had to tear her away almost by force. She has had a narrow escape from brain-fever. And now I have come to implore, to demand"—Mrs. Graham, with all her poise and calm, was rising to the hysterical key—"her release from a fate that would be worse than death for such a girl. I mean marrying without the love of her whole soul. She esteems you, she respects you, she admires you, she likes you; but—" Mrs. Graham pressed her lips ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... among the Zulus is, apparently, of a naturally hysterical and nervous constitution. "He hears the spirits who speak by whistlings speaking to him."(1) Whistling is also the language of the ghosts in New Caledonia, where Mr. Atkinson informs us that he has occasionally put an able-bodied Kaneka to ignominious flight by whistling ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... think we are ourselves again, and can be reasonable," Valentine began. "Don't let us be hysterical. ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... a man or an animal is an inheritance from ancestors near or remote. In the human species a morose or hysterical temperament may possibly be corrected or improved, by education and effort. With animals this is rarely possible. The morose gorilla gives way to cheerfulness only when it is placed in ideally pleasant and stimulating social ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... seemed to him a triumph of mind and intelligence when he succeeded in shutting out the hurly-burly altogether. Only, when in the name of the war his private freedom and property were interfered with, he had flamed out into hysterical revolt. Old aristocratic instincts came to the aid of passionate will, and, ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... revolution did it become fully known what incompetent and irresponsible officers were in command. It was then learned that a great part of the time the Emperor was either drunk or doped, that the Empress was hysterical and on the verge of a mental breakdown, and that they were assisted by senile Sturmer, mentally unbalanced Protopopov, and profligate Rasputin, none of whom could read a compass nor lay out a course ...
— The Russian Revolution; The Jugo-Slav Movement • Alexander Petrunkevitch, Samuel Northrup Harper,
... in the ship, rising to hysterical intensity. Bart thought, incredulously, this is really happening. It felt like a nightmare. His father a fugitive from the Lhari. Briscoe dead. He himself traveling, with forged papers, to ...
— The Colors of Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... be a little hysterical, for she is a proud thing and represses her emotions as long as she can. I'll step up and see if she doesn't need a soothing draft of some sort." And Dr. Alec threw off his coat ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... them with her accustomed urbanity and politeness, while they cast wondering glances toward each other; probably that they had not found Mrs. Orville in hysterical tears. But Miss Sharpwell, nothing daunted, and determined to sympathize, readily expressed her admiration of Mrs. Orville's fortitude of mind, that she could support herself with so much calmness, under ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... suppose so. If she wanted to she could always get round me." Then he turned on Iglesias with hysterical violence. "But what do you know? Why do you ask that? Are you among her patrons? I trusted you. I believed you were a gentleman in feeling—and it is a dirty trick to get me in here and fill me up with food and liquor, when you ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet
... slumber closes one's eyelids again. Or you drive by a little creek where there are bushes and hear the bird, called by the steppe dwellers "the sleeper," call "Asleep, asleep, asleep!" while another laughs or breaks into trills of hysterical weeping—that is the owl. For whom do they call and who hears them on that plain, God only knows, but there is deep sadness and lamentation in their cry. . . . There is a scent of hay and dry grass and belated flowers, ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... mamma let me come!" George cried victoriously. "I told you I should!" He was far too agitated to think of shaking hands, and seemed to be in a state of fever. All his gestures were those of a proud, hysterical conqueror, and like a conqueror he gazed down at Edwin and Janet, who stood beneath him with upturned faces. He had absolutely forgotten the existence of his acquaintances in the carriage. "Did you know I've had the ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... others said, "Hush!" so peremptorily, and with such a total disregard for any one person's special emotions, that the little girl's hysterical fit was nipped in ...
— Polly - A New-Fashioned Girl • L. T. Meade
... the effect of her surprise, she was yet more overcome than at first; crouching among the cushions with her head bent down over her knees, and covering her face with her hands. Reclining in the soft pile, I held her in my arms, overcoming perforce what seemed hysterical reluctance; but when I would have withdrawn the little hands, she threw herself on my knee, burying her face ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg |
